Peak Trump?

When I wrote my forecast for 2026, I certainly did not see Trump coming out all guns blazing at the start of the year, but that is what we got. I saw instead a period of consolidation with the mid-terms approaching late in the year as Democrats winning in the mid-terms would spell “lame duck” for Trump; as well as a possible impeachment. Better to cools things until getting beyond the election, just like the Trump administration helped Milei to do in Argentina late last year.

It all started with the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, Maduro, on January 3rd. In many ways this showed the weakness of the US in not being able to mount a full-scale military assault upon the country, and instead having to go for a kidnapping of the head of state; leaving the rest of the administration in place. Since then, all of the bravura about the US telling the new Venezuelan president what to do has faded. There may be more openness to foreign development of the nation’s oil reserves, but the Chavista apparatus is still in place and supported by the Venezuelan majority. The whole operation seems to have unhinged the Trump administration into a period of gleeful bravura as it threw its weight around abroad with respect to Greenland, at home with respect to the ICE invasion of Minnesota, and now with Iran.

With respect to Greenland, Trump gained some concessions but at the cost of absolutely alarming the vassal leaders in Europe. And it only served to underline the message of Canadian prime minister Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum. Carney has visited China and agreed on some lessening of the trade friction between the two nations, to be met with the empty threat of 100% tariffs from Trump. In recent weeks, the EU has agreed the “mother of all trade deals” with India. A nation that is also in discussions with ASEAN which may lead to an ASEAN-India trade deal, or even the entry of India into the RCEP trade deal that includes ASEAN, China, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Then of course we also have the EU-Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia) trade deal. All facilitating trade that can be denominated in Euro and other non-US$ currencies. Then we also have Canada looking to diversify their arms supplies away from the US, working with both South Korea and Sweden. Oh, and VW canned plans for an Audi manufacturing plant in the US, perhaps that brand will essentially just exit a market which is not that important with respect to its global sales. And Trump then upped the US tariffs on South Korea from 15% to 25% because the South Korean legislature is taking too long to ratify its unequal treaty with the US.

The murder of a white US female citizen mother by an ICE agent did not cool the Trump administration’s ardour, with responses ranging from outright lying and gaslighting by numerous senior administration officials to the obstruction of local law enforcement efforts to properly investigate the crime. ICE Barbie (Kristi “I shot my dog because he underperformed” Noem) went as far as positing that the 3,000 ICE mob would leave Minnesota if the state turned over its voter rolls to the administration; a very obvious attempt at extortion. But then came the absolutely brazen execution of a white US male citizen who was brandishing a phone at ICE while attempting to help a woman who had been knocked over and sprayed with noxious chemicals by the ICE mob. He turned out to be a nurse at the Veteran’s Affairs and a licensed gun holder (he had his gun on him, but it was holstered until taken by ICE). With video evidence taken from multiple angles which showed the execution, the administration’s lies and gaslighting (“he was brandishing a gun” blah, blah, blah) rapidly failed. The administration then defaulted to a line that bringing a gun to a demonstration should be expected to risk the holder getting shot, which of course did not play well with the Second Amendment loving MAGA faithful; resulting in the administration being at odds with both the Wall Street Journal and the National Rifle Association! When a Republican administration has lost the oligarch mouthpiece and the NRA you know that it has really messed up. Even the oligarch-tool Democrats had to about-face and state that they would stop a bill that they had helped pass in the House that included increased funding for ICE; threatening a government shutdown.

The administration quickly found the first sacrificial official, the “I love wearing Nazi-style overcoats with a Nazi-style haircut” Bovino “commander at large” of the Border Patrol; he is reported to have been demoted and may soon retire. There was also some distancing from ICE Barbie, who had been the other most vehement liar and gas lighter on the activities of ICE. Then she was transferred to be “Special Envoy for the Shield of Americas” whatever that means; a demotion to be kept out of public view. Trump personally called the Minnesota governor in an attempt to de-escalate and find a way out of the mess that he himself had created. The hubris of the invasion of Minnesota with 3,000 ICE thugs, some seeming to be hardly trained or vetted and allowed to wear masks to hide their identity, has turned the immigration issue into a net negative for the Trump administration; to add to the economy and an overall net negative Trump approval rating. And now ICE Barbie has been quietly removed from her position under the cover of the Iran War.

The bravura of the successful Maduro kidnapping has utterly evaporated, as the administration is now losing on both the tariff (see below) and immigration fronts. When I was first writing this post I included the text:

The next test will be whether or not the administration risks another attack upon Iran that could rapidly turn into a much larger conflagration, after the utter failure of its attempt at colour revolution in that country. Currently, the pressure of Israel, Zionist donors and the neocons seems to be winning out over TACO.

Well, the administration sure as hell leapt through that test! After ridiculously assuming that the murder of the spiritual leader of the Shia Muslims (akin to the Pope for Catholics) and Iranian Supreme Leader, would cause the Iranian population to rise up against the government and/or elements in the government to carry out a Western-friendly coup, the US is now engaged in what has rapidly become a quagmire with no good exit. With a global energy, financial and economic crisis to boot. Already, the US is removing sanctions on Russian oil with the Straits of Hormuz closed until further notice.

The Supreme Court ruling against the legality of Trump’s across-the-board tariff policies, a ruling which supports the rulings of all the lower courts, removes the administration’s favourite weapon and severely embarrasses it both internationally and domestically. The one good thing is that it will reduce domestic inflationary pressures as the across-the-board (as against the specific sectoral) tariffs are removed. Many nations that have verbally accepted unequal trade treaties can be expected to backtrack, including South Korea, and Indian from its supposed trade surrender; India has already stated that it will continue to purchase Russian oil (now provided with sanction waivers by the Trump administration!). The Supreme Court ruling is specifically against the Trump administration’s misuse of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, with which the president took for himself powers of across-the-board tariffs that the US Constitution reserves for Congress. The removal of these tariffs will also remove at least US$200 billion annually of federal tax revenue, worsening the budget deficit.

The president still has other means, for example the Section 232 that allows for tariffs on specific industries for “national security” reasons, which Trump has used to levy tariffs on imported steel, aluminum, lumber and automobiles; these stay in place. Also, the Section 122 “current account emergency” tariffs which the administration has used to raise 15% tariffs on the world; but these only last for five months before Congress has to approve them. Then there is also the Section 301 which can be used to punish individual countries for trade actions deemed unreasonable or discriminatory. But none of these allow the ease of Trump just deciding to punish any country with tariffs for whatever reason he comes up with (as with Brazil and India, for example). The tariff war has already failed with China, forcing a TACO, while Brazil actually expanded its exports (much of it with China) after Trump levelled 50% tariffs on the nation.

Trump is also having some problems with his MAGA religious base, with his religious watchdog/advisory board being seen more and more as a Zionist tool. First, Carrie Prejean Boller was fired for her views on Israel even after being a long time Trump supporter and associate. A second member (Sameerah Munshi), the only Muslim woman on the board, quit in protest. A call for an investigation into the sacking of Prejean Boller; which seems to have been instigated by Paula White-Cain, an evangelical religious-extremist supporter of Trump who acts as his spiritual advisor.

Then of course we have the long drawn out Epstein files affair, with the administration continuously dragging its feet, and then censoring reams and reams of the documents so as not to hurt Trump’s friends (as Mary Taylor Greene says that Trump put it) and Trump himself. Many now consider the attacks on Venezuela and Iran as attempts to take the focus away from the Epstein files, with the Iran attack being referred to as “Epstein Fury”.

“In like a lion and out like a lamb” may capture the first two years of the Trump administration if it loses the mid-term elections after seeing significant setbacks on the issues of trade and immigration that are central to its agenda, together with an Iranian debacle. The promise to “end the Ukraine War in 24 hours” has also been shown to be utter empty boasting as Russia presses on with gaining its end goals by changing the terms on the ground. And the attempt to subjugate China with an escalating tariff war also ended in utter failure, as China showed that the US needs it more than China needs the US. With a delayed impact bomb set to go off just after the mid-term elections in the form of the end of the one year trade truce and the restart of the across-the-board critical mineral export restrictions against the US. Confidence tends to have a quiet manifestation, while weakness mixed with ignorance and hubris tends to start loud and end with a whimper.

But we must remember that below all the bluster and incompetence, the Trump administration has already delivered many of the things that the oligarchy wanted; such as yet more tax cuts for the rich, yet more state troughs for their corporations to drink out of, and a demolition of the regulatory state. The Democrats will do their best to miss the current political open goal, as that is what they are paid to do by the oligarchy. To that oligarchy, Trump is just a front man and if needed he will be taken off the field or even fed to the impeachment process to feed the vengeful hunger of the US citizenry. But nothing will really change, somewhat more competent people may be placed into the administration and a more competent ICE/Gestapo developed. The current failure is not one of mission but of incompetence, ignorance and misplaced confidence. The oligarchy does not need the 2026 mid-terms to be “stolen” as they win whichever wing of the uniparty wins and do not want to undermine the “democracy” myth which helps obfuscate their societal dominance.

Unfortunately for the US oligarchy, their choice of the tool (Trump) and policies has backfired significantly on a geopolitical level - aiding rather than forestalling the continued rise of China and accelerating rather than arresting the relative fall of the US Empire. The US oligarchy as a whole suffers from some of the same ignorance, arrogance and misplaced confidence that the Trump administration does. The US oligarchy is a very bad loser, and may well try to destroy as much of Iran as possible as it faces the need for a retreat. But it is generally not stupid enough to start a nuclear war that will utterly destroy its international standing; including with the populations of Europe and Japan (who will be reminded who dropped the nuclear bombs on them); a move that will be truly “beyond the pale”.